Pax URL Wrap is an OSGi URL handler that can process your legacy jar at runtime and transform it into an OSGi bundle.

Why

Imagine this. You have a bundle that requires a set of existing jars in order to work. As for example Apache Commons Lang. What you could do? Look first on Apache Felix Commons to find out if is not already wrapped and use that jar. But what if is not there or the version you are looking for is not there? What if is your own jar? Of course you could wrap it yourself but wouldn't be easier that you could just use an url wrap it? That's why this handler was made.

Overview

By using the wrap protocol you can wrap an existing jar as an OSGi bundle. The wrapping process can be done in different ways:

Wraps apache commons logging version 1.1 found by using mvn: protocol using instructions from commons-logging-1.1.bnd from local directory and instructions Bundle-SymbolicName=JCL and Bundle-Version=1.1:

NOTE: Beware that you may need to escape the $ character which precedes the instruction list if you are using a shell. That is, precede the dollar sign with a backslash: \$. Otherwise, your instruction may be interpreted as a variable name and consequently the shell will attempt to resolve it.